A Civil Beat Investigation: In Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, people with long-lasting injuries are often forced to battle doctors hand-picked by insurance companies to get treatment and disability payments.
What Could $1.5 Billion Buy You (Besides More Of The Rail Project)?
The Honolulu City Council is weighing extending the general excise tax surcharge by five more years to raise $1.5 billion more for rail. But what else could all that money pay for?
A five-year extension of the 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge on Oahu is supposed to cover the growing shortfall for Honolulu’s $6.6 billion (and counting) rail project.
Officials from the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation say that the extension should raise from $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion for the project; they’re using $1.5 billion as the mid-range estimate.
But some politicians, including Honolulu City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, worry that passing the extension is just throwing good money after bad. Kobayashi has wondered whether it might be better to scrap the 20-mile project altogether.
After all, Hawaii does have a lot of needs for public funds, whether it’s to help our homeless, fix our crumbling infrastructure or provide a better life for Micronesian immigrants.
It can also be hard to grasp just how much money $1.5 billion is, when considering what else that amount could be spent on.
So Civil Beat decided to ask:
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Nick Grube is a reporter for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at nick@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @nickgrube. You can also reach him by phone at 808-377-0246.
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